Ephara, God of the Polis - Tokens of Appreciation

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darrenhabib
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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

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I have some decks that are part of my arsenal that I always come back to year-after-year, just because I enjoy elements of them so much and of course because they work.
But I never really get the opportunity to take the time to post them (on forums here) as set after set rolls around from Wizards of the Coast and I'm constantly posting on "the latest and greatest" commander decks I build. I never give my older tried and true decks the love to share and explain some of them. So here goes.

This deck I've simply named "Ephara Tokens" and I've been playing it on and off for at least the last 4 years.

It's a draw-go-control deck that simply wants to drag the game on forever. It's one of my few decks that I will constantly get games going to 20 or more turns.

Rather than playing a horde of flash creatures, the way this deck get's advantages is through token producing outlets that will trigger Ephara on each opponents turn.

I highly recommend this deck if you want games to go on for a long time and want a deck that is simply good against basically everything. Sick of opponents comboing out? Opponents like running you over with creatures? It's got a plan against most archetypes.

Token generators

Part of the reason for token generators and not specifically creatures is that there is a lot of board removal in the deck and we want to have draw engines remain in play after casting many of these.

As you can see these are mainly from enchantments that require investing various amounts of mana to produce a token creature.
Oketra the True and Heliod, God of the Sun are indestructible and combining this with Ephara indestructible, you have a really long-term draw engine that is hard for opponents to deal with. Let's put it this way, with counterspell backup as well it's impossible for your opponents to stop you from having these indefinitely.

The idea is simple. You just want to produce a single token during each of your opponents turns so that you draw a card each players turn. Once the game goes long you are probably drawing 5 cards each round in a 4 player game.

The deck is designed for attrition and we are trying to get the game state into a position that everything that players are doing is "fair".
You can see this from a few cards like Spirit of the Labyrinth, Rule of Law, Arcane Laboratory, Humility, that all players are not doing anything too busted.

Sacred Mesa is the most mana efficient of the token generators and one of the best cards in the deck. Sure it doesn't have the indestructibility of Oketra the True and Heliod, God of the Sun but you can really get the draw going efficiently.

The way you are using these token creatures as well is simply to block as much as possible to preserve your life total. Honestly you're are not amassing a token army at all, except for the very very last stages of the game, and I'm taking about around turn 15 or usually more. Even then it's for pecking in damage, just a simple inevitability once all the rest of the lock down has happened.

It must be noted that because all the token creatures have 1 toughness, Skullclamp is another great source of draw with these.

Mass removal

There are 4 cards that can remove the board of all non-land cards. Your plan is to be as patient as possible to let opponents build up their boards to then remove everything.
This is the ultimate control deck, and with a steady flow of card draw you will be able to span the removal almost certainly in time for the next potential wipe.

There is also creature specific removal in Supreme Verdict, Terminus and Austere Command can do a bunch of modes.
Terminus is nice with Ephara draw triggers happening on opponents upkeep, as it will mean the first card you draw for the turn, meaning it'll cost you w every so often.

All in all the deck is designed so that the impact of the removal is minimal for you. Sure you will get cards that are hit by these, but you are never committing to the board majorly until you are really set up and have a firm grip on the game.
Even creatures that you might cast, at least they are normally replaced by Ephara draw trigger.
Plus you'll see later on that there are a number of ways to get your enchantments back from graveyard.

Oblivion Stone can be combined with Academy Ruins to have an indefinite ability to wipe the board each turn.

Land ramp/search/transform

Because mana is still important to being able to both deploy spells while also being able to invest into the token generators, we have various ways of getting extra lands into play in the not known for this color-pie of Azorius.
The reason the deck doesn't want to use mana rocks is that we are casting a lot of mass non-land removal, which invariable we will be casting many times during a game.

This might not seem like much, but when your game plan is to make the game last as long as possible, getting extra lands into play overtime really adds up.

Walking Atlas and Dreamscape Artist are great as you get additional draw off Ephara so you have the fuel to keep them going every turn for a guaranteed additional land.

Search for Azcanta, Treasure Map, Thaumatic Compass are transform lands, and getting a board that survives your mass removal cards means that you don't get any disadvantages from them. So they are both land ramp and continuous advantages.

Druidic Satchel is a sort of tech card and you can even use Sensei's Divining Top and Scroll Rack to set it up how you want. All the abilities are relevant, as it's a token generator for Ephara draw, but mainly you want the land ramp.

There is even Stoneforge Mystic that can search for Sword of the Animist (or Skullclamp) for getting precious extra lands into play.

Instant disruption

Now for a control deck you might expect more counterspells? However with the mass removal you really will only use these in spots that are necessary to prevent a win or a loss.

This is where you use your life total as a major resource and let most permanent spells resolve as you can almost always deal with them. So really the counterspells are only for the most powerful spells cast that effect the game on the stack.

So I'll reiterate that the way to win is to be as patient with what to use these spells on as possible. I mean as patient as a Christian waiting for marriage..

Forbid is the best over the longer game as you can easily discard cards as you accumulate additional draws with Ephara.

Powerful Enchantments

There are some enchantments in the deck to help through the course of the game, that you might expose to your own removal, but the serve very well to your plan.
Or you deploy them once you've got a firm grip on everything that could possible go on in the game.

Humility work excellent with your token generators as most of them are 1/1's anyway. Only Oketra the True get's effected by the card.
But you do need to be careful with your devotion for Ephara and Heliod, God of the Sun not wanting them to be creatures.
In fact you really want to avoid making these creatures at all, as you can expose them to exile effects like Swords to Plowshares. However there are times that you want the indestructible blocker (or attacker) so the game will dictate if you deploy enough devotion to turn these on as creatures.

Greater Auramancy and Starfield of Nyx are a reflection of protecting or getting back key enchantments in the deck, including your token generators.
Again you want to in general avoid having your enchantments turn into creatures as they are more exposed to removal, so with Starfield of Nyx you want to avoid getting 5 enchantments in play most times.

There is also Replenish as a way to get back all your enchantments that may have ended up in your graveyard, often even from your own mass removal.

Hall of Heliod's Generosity also allows you to keep putting back your best at the time enchantment that you might want.

I will point out that often you will have hand sizes greater than 7 cards down the stretch and you will probably have to discard due to hand size. It's tempting to have Reliquary Tower in the deck to save on resources this way, but it's better to leverage off Starfield of Nyx and Replenish for a longer term plan as they are very mana efficient. So even if you don't have them (in play or hand) you can discard enchantments like this for this plan further into the game.

Rule of Law and Arcane Laboratory is to make sure that going down the stretch storm type decks can't unleash a massive turn to get around all your disruption, and the style of play of your own deck is that you only need to cast a few spells. Draw-go, draw-go.

My really tech cards for the long-term attrition game (the straws that break the camels back) are Martyr's Bond and Dismiss into Dream.
Martyr's Bond is a sacrifice effect for a number of card types. With the token creature generation it's impossible for your opponents to attack into you as you can block and it causes mass sacrifices.
My favorite play is with Sacred Mesa as you have to sacrifice a creature each turn, so this is just an Abyss which is usually too much as you've already taken away all your opponents resources usually at that stage (i.e. they are top decking).
But you can also use it for enchantments with the tokens produced from Heliod, God of the Sun.

Dismiss into Dream is the card that really makes sure that opponents can't play many (if any) creatures. The land base is specifically designed to have a number of cards that allow you to target creatures.

The "cost" of having these in the deck is very small (Land Tax for example), but it's great to have these eventually for the death-grip of Dismiss into Dream.
Minamo, School at Water's Edge and Eiganjo Castle can target Commanders or any legendary creatures for that matter.
Kor Haven and Spires of Orazca makes attacking seem like a bad option.
Tower of the Magistrate is the best as it can just target anything.

Arcane Lighthouse is in the deck just so you can get around hexproof and shroud.

One of the reason for Weathered Wayfarer is to search up for a number of these utility lands.

Enlightened Tutor, Idyllic Tutor and Academy Rector are for getting key enchantments that you might need at various stages of the game.

Creatures

As you can see there are not a lot of creatures in the deck, as you can expect your own removal to make their longevity limited, but they do provide some great advantages.
Obviously you can get the trigger off Ephara so at the very least replace themselves.

Stonecloaker and Venser, Shaper Savant can be used to bounce themselves for getting multiple Ephara triggers if wanting to use them this way.

Faerie Artisans is a house with the ability to not only trigger Ephara draw each players turn most times, but getting you ETB effects and additional blocker for most turns.
Last edited by darrenhabib 4 years ago, edited 3 times in total.

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

I love this deck obviously, it's a very unique take in Ephara and one I have considered the least. I will say that it really wants smothering tithe though as all those token producers are mana greedy. I would consider As foretold too as it really shines in these long games and lets you keep up interaction while pumping out tokens. I really loved it in my build but I wasn't quite controlling enough to defend it, and not enough enchantments for hall.

Oh, I forgot planar collapse. That card is insane in Hall decks with Ephara.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

Oh, another note:
I used to play dismiss into dream in my first Derevi deck. It was #1 most hated card in that deck by my playgroup. Sick to see it out again :)

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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
I love this deck obviously, it's a very unique take in Ephara and one I have considered the least. I will say that it really wants smothering tithe though as all those token producers are mana greedy. I would consider As foretold too as it really shines in these long games and lets you keep up interaction while pumping out tokens. I really loved it in my build but I wasn't quite controlling enough to defend it, and not enough enchantments for hall.

Oh, I forgot planar collapse. That card is insane in Hall decks with Ephara.
I really like the idea of Planar Collapse with Hall of Heliod's Generosity.

As Foretold does sound like a nice way to free up mana. There is a lot of sub-game where you weigh up the risks of tapping out at end of opponents turn to get that additional token in play versus still hold up a counterspell for some instant interaction.

I'm less sold on Smothering Tithe in this particular deck as often I'm preventing big draw from opponents happening anyway. So it's basically good for 3 mana a turn, which isn't all that exciting as it is a non-land card still up for removal.

I'm going to add Tolaria West to give me access to utility lands, Hall of Heliod's Generosity being a potentially good target.


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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

I think those are solid all around changes. Bauble was always pretty underwhelming for me and trinket is pretty poor tempo.

I will say that I was severely anti-tithe when I first tried it. Even just making +3 colored mana per turn cycle as its floor has regularly taken over games because the games are *so dang long* with Ephara, even my version which is less controlly. When I've played it it's been absurd, and there's a lot more incidental card draw in EDH, arcane denial becomes essentially free too ;)

The floor for me has basically been 3 copies of talisman of dominance in 1 card. The ceiling has been "someone wheels, I get 21 tokens and then untap and guaranteed win the game"

tolaria west was always very good for me getting academy ruins before I cut the oblivion stone package. I suspect it will be very solid in this deck too.

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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
I will say that I was severely anti-tithe when I first tried it. Even just making +3 colored mana per turn cycle as its floor has regularly taken over games because the games are *so dang long* with Ephara, even my version which is less controlly. When I've played it it's been absurd, and there's a lot more incidental card draw in EDH, arcane denial becomes essentially free too ;)

The floor for me has basically been 3 copies of talisman of dominance in 1 card. The ceiling has been "someone wheels, I get 21 tokens and then untap and guaranteed win the game"
I do play Smothering Tithe in my Feather, the Redeemed, Elsha of the Infinite and Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle decks, so I do have experience with it.

Maybe I'm not analyzing it properly for the deck. It costs 4 mana, but then you get 3 mana back that same turn round (minimum), meaning you can invest probably in a token generation immediately.
I'll give it try, the only way is to give it a whirl.

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Post by shermanido37 » 4 years ago

I have a fair amount of thoughts to share on this deck, but for now let's address the biggest issue:
How does this deck win?
It's a difficult question to answer for pokken's deck as well, but at least he can aspire for a combo win and has the tools for it. On the other hand, your deck is only full of tokens and board wipes. You don't run Elesh Norn to buff them up so it's even more difficult. Ephara can hardly count as a wincon since she's easy to chump, especially since you have Humility in the deck which is disastrous for her.

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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

shermanido37 wrote:
4 years ago
I have a fair amount of thoughts to share on this deck, but for now let's address the biggest issue:
How does this deck win?
It's a difficult question to answer for pokken's deck as well, but at least he can aspire for a combo win and has the tools for it. On the other hand, your deck is only full of tokens and board wipes. You don't run Elesh Norn to buff them up so it's even more difficult. Ephara can hardly count as a wincon since she's easy to chump, especially since you have Humility in the deck which is disastrous for her.
It's literally an attrition deck. It normally takes the game into the 20+ turns. Then eventually you just token creature opponents out over the course of game. However long it takes it doesn't matter. But actually Sacred Mesa does have a relatively fast clock once you get it going. But by "get it going" I still mean like turn 15, when you can start producing say 6 tokens a turn round and safely keep counters up or what not.
The deck is maddening slow for your opponents, but they can't get away from you.

I try to avoid putting enough devotion on the board to turn on Ephara as a creature if possible. But sometimes she can be a decent blocker if wanting to use her that way.

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Post by shermanido37 » 4 years ago

So this is a stax deck and should be treated as such. That means you want to work really hard on mana denial as well as card and spell denial that you're already invested in. Mana vortex, Mana breach and AEther Barrier seem like a good start, not to mention the ever famous Winter Orb. And running Azcanta means you can and should run Narset, Partner of Veils.
I would also heavily consider giving up some of your slow and inefficient cards like Druidic Satchel (really?), Burnished Hart, Dreamscape Artist, Thaumatic Compass, Dismiss into Dream, and more.

I also have a different suggestion if you're looking to be establishing more board presence: Harmonious Archon. Your abundance of tokens should make the most out of the buffs it gives, and your opponents that run giant evasive threats should suffer the most. If you are in a pinch by his p/t manipulation you could simply bounce him back to hand.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

druidic satchel is way better than you're thinkin here, sherm. He has a ton of topdeck manipulation so very often it reads 2T/ramp 1, or 2T make a 1/1 and draw a card. In long games that's very powerful. I used to play it in a topdeck manip deck and it was ridiculous, basically free rampant growth every turn.

I don't play it because I'm looking for critical turn of 10, but if I was looking for 20 I would definitely play it. That land advantage is absurd over long time frames.

The focus of the 'stax' elements of this deck feels primarily on rule of law effects. I have found those to be generally the most appropriate stax approaches to Ephara, because her nature is to want to cast small cheap spells on everyone's turns, it basically allows forbid type stuff to lock the board.

If I were to add anything more staxy to this deck I think it would be overburden followed by opposition. The symmetric mana hate is not great here since he has very few rocks and a lot of effects that put lands into play.

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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

shermanido37 wrote:
4 years ago
So this is a stax deck and should be treated as such. That means you want to work really hard on mana denial as well as card and spell denial that you're already invested in. Mana vortex, Mana breach and AEther Barrier seem like a good start, not to mention the ever famous Winter Orb. And running Azcanta means you can and should run Narset, Partner of Veils.
I would also heavily consider giving up some of your slow and inefficient cards like Druidic Satchel (really?), Burnished Hart, Dreamscape Artist, Thaumatic Compass, Dismiss into Dream, and more.

I also have a different suggestion if you're looking to be establishing more board presence: Harmonious Archon. Your abundance of tokens should make the most out of the buffs it gives, and your opponents that run giant evasive threats should suffer the most. If you are in a pinch by his p/t manipulation you could simply bounce him back to hand.
I will point out that this is a tried and true deck. I've played hundreds of games (over 200). So it works, very well, and that's why I keep coming back to it year-after-year. It's about running your opponents out of resources by letting them commit to the board, so that you eventually remove them. You use your life as a resource and wait for a reasonable threshold of permanents before you cast a spell like Planar Cleansing. You yourself are far less effected. After this happens several times, your ability to block with a few tokens, means that you can just keep up this attrition game for a long time. Opponents are much more in top deck mode, so their ability to present a board that threatens you becomes less and less as the game goes on, while your draw 4 cards a turn means that you always have an eventual answer for anything.
The deck does less well against storm like decks that don't need to commit permanents to the board as much and hence why Rule of Law, Arcane Laboratory and Spirit of the Labyrinth can be important against those match ups.

Mana denial strategy would realistically hurt how the deck functions itself. A Winter Orb is going to be hard to work around with tapping to make tokens.

There are basically two plans from the start:
A) Just keep deploying lands. Lands are the only thing that are guaranteed to remain in play. So the deck has a heavy emphasis on putting lands into play, off fairly unconventional means. Just because Azorius is not mechanically designed this way.
Getting an extra land into play each turn off Druidic Satchel is actually exactly where you want to be at. Think hare and the tortoise, where you are the tortoise. This even applies to drawing cards off Ephara where it can take a while to get a setup where you are using her efficiently to get the draw each turn.
Where as pokken deck is going to be far more efficient at getting the draw fast and efficiently each turn, this deck can afford to miss turns of draw. Maybe around turns 5-10 I'm only drawing 2 cards a turn type thing. Rather than draw I'm investing into things that put more lands into play so that the long game is more efficient.

B) Control role, but with a loooooooooot of patience. That first board wipe can come quite far into the game if you play well. You're hoping to only have to commit a Oketra the True or Heliod, God of the Sun as a token generator, as you are going to be removing non-land permanents eventually, but if you have to cast a Sacred Mesa as a generator to run into your own removal then that is OK.
Those few tokens can be enough to keep blocking the biggest of attacks. Your opponents might be getting some damage through, but as long as you are not actually being killed then you can keep this going for a while.
The deck eventually will get back these type of resources via Starfield of Nyx, Replenish, Hall of Heliod's Generosity.
Cards like Martyr's Bond and Dismiss into Dream are the nails in the coffin type cards. They don't usually get deployed until after like Turn 15. They are the insurance that makes it impossible for opponents to get traction and so if you're talking about the true win conditions of the deck, it's cards like these. Sure beating down with 10 tokens might take a while to kill opponents, but it just a matter of time.
If you draw these cards during the early game, often I'll discard them due to hand size. with the plan of using Starfield of Nyx or Replenish to get them into play without casting them for mana efficiency.

The counterspells themselves are only to be used on stopping a game winning play on the spot. I know when I've played the game well when I start discarding counterspells due to hand size. This happens sometimes. Where I've literally got a full grip of them on Turn 15+ and just haven't used them frivolously.

I realize I've explained the deck a fair bit more here and really this sort of thing I should have put into the thread from the start. But I haven't added a "Playing the deck" section yet, just wanted to get the list up before spending too much time on content.

If you're a non-believer still, then I recommend just giving it a go. Out-wit, out-last is the motto for the game plan.

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Post by shermanido37 » 4 years ago

I guess it's mostly a meta thing, then, because in my meta there is no way that kind of slow play would be enough.
There is no guarantee of early board safety, because there is a Krenko deck that can kill you by turn 5 or 6. There is no guarantee of lands' safety, because both Maelstrom Wanderer and Lord Windgrace run Wildfire cards and Karador runs Magus of the Balance. Rule of Law effects alone would not be enough, because Daretti and The Ur-Dragon would cheat their stuff out and ruin your day, and I also like to be safe in case I encounter new decks like Uril or Rafiq.

How does your deck deal with such strategies?

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

I would love to hear about the online meta a bit more, honestly I could see an entire thread about OP's experiences online. He plays more Edh online than anyone I have ever heard of.

I regularly think about buying some of my decks online but I have no idea how things would play out or what kind of people there are, etc. Feels like it could be a fool's errand, but also could be amazingly fun if you found the right folks.

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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
I would love to hear about the online meta a bit more, honestly I could see an entire thread about OP's experiences online. He plays more Edh online than anyone I have ever heard of.

I regularly think about buying some of my decks online but I have no idea how things would play out or what kind of people there are, etc. Feels like it could be a fool's errand, but also could be amazingly fun if you found the right folks.
Yeah that's a deep and complex subject. The simplistic answer is that you literally have all levels of decks and players. Several years ago there wasn't that many competitive players. Let's say a 80/20 split. That is 80% of players only really have causal decks, with the other 20% having competitive. So what ended up happening is that you get a lot of games where the power level of decks lead to fairly one-sided games.

Now days however the split might be the same, but there are thousands more players, who have much more of a grasp of levels of play and deck building.
And so there often 3 different queues you'll normally get. "Casual", "Competitive" and "cEDH". This isn't official, it's just when making a queue you put this in the comment to give people something to aim for. You can expect a "Competitive" queue to pop up within about 10 mins and "cEDH" more like half an hour to an hour. So I normally jump onto the "cEDH" if one pops ups when I can.
This has definitely cut down on the general saltiness of player experiences.
The games where you'll have the least problems with player interactions are the "cEDH" games. If a player wins on Turn 1-3, then you'll give them an applaud, where as in other queues, you'll get the normal salty chat. It's basically a gentlemen understanding that when you play "cEDH" a Turn 2-3 win can be expected and if you can pull it off then "good on you".

I'd join both Casual and Competitive queues (or just unlabeled) with this Ephara deck, as it scales well with both. Like in more casual games I will specifically not counterspell some peoples big plays to make the game more interesting and I might even tell people that I'll need to be the archenemy after I have a stacked hand. In more competitive games I'll do everything to try and win as best as possible.

Listen Magic Online is still a very mixed bag. Some people are just nasty individuals, as the anonymity gives a licence to be a dick.
But with the increasing number of players, as I said you are really getting people tuned into the various levels of play, so you can tailor your experience for how you like to play the game. Which I think is much harder to do if just going to your local game store.
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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

shermanido37 wrote:
4 years ago
I guess it's mostly a meta thing, then, because in my meta there is no way that kind of slow play would be enough.
There is no guarantee of early board safety, because there is a Krenko deck that can kill you by turn 5 or 6. There is no guarantee of lands' safety, because both Maelstrom Wanderer and Lord Windgrace run Wildfire cards and Karador runs Magus of the Balance. Rule of Law effects alone would not be enough, because Daretti and The Ur-Dragon would cheat their stuff out and ruin your day, and I also like to be safe in case I encounter new decks like Uril or Rafiq.

How does your deck deal with such strategies?
I mean I'd be pretty happy to be matched up against Krenko. Sure a Turn 1 Sol Ring can potentially lead to a run away game. But there are a healthy amount of tool to wreck Krenko. An early Mystical Tutor can get Terminus and Enlightened Tutor can get Humility. You just need one opponent to answer the Krenko for example if they get him on Turn 2, and then it's basically lights-out for them for the rest of the game.
Any deck that is creature based is in for trouble against this Ephara deck.

For sure the "meta" does skew the content. Online has very little land destruction, which is why ramp is so...rampant.

Where as my paper group has more of a focus on artifact mana, just because almost every deck plays Winter Orb.

The deck does still run a lot of counterspells, so I think you'd be surprised at how much of chance at controlling a game no matter what the matchup.

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